First week of bookwork is done, made all the boxes so could check all the things off…cuz that is the best part.
…One of the things: my weekly “Artist’s Date,” I paired with my “Imaginary Lives” list, and went to be an Archaeologist for the afternoon, on Saturday. Not for real, of course, mostly as a gesture of representation. But when you’re hunched over with a plastic tub, and a gardening spade, sitting on your haunches at the seaside…picking at (and through) insignificant shit while curious dog walkers pass by, and kids stop to stare at you, cuz, “what the hell, lady?” It kinda steals a little of your thunder.
…Until you eventually start getting into it, and make a staging of your findings on some leaves for picture-taking purposes, and feel terribly importantly artistic as you try to flick those tiny crab claws open –because that’s just more aesthetically pleasing, and also: “Oh Fuck off! I’m trying to ART here, dude! You just picked your dog’s shit up in a hand baggie, and put it in your pocket. I totally saw you! Who’s the REAL wierdo here, really?!?”
(…I’m also dealing with anger issues. And being more positive…)
I am a work in progress.
Anyway…I picked at things buried under rocks and twigs, I took some arty pics, I sat on an “Alice” log, contemplating its navel. I breathed. I watched pokey sticks gouge at the shore. I wrote a little thing.
…I Be’d.
…And then I went home, popped my findings in a baggy, and clipped em to my Wall of Wonder…to look back on.
…Whenever.
…To that one time I was a marine archaeologist.
…Which is way better than being a poop-scooping, pocket warmer. So there.
“Only Alice Knows”
“Breathe.”
“Messy Bow”
“Those metaphorical shards of life shit that just keep coming at you, wave after wave.”
“Things Found”
“The Random Details”
…I also managed my morning pages after a full night’s sleep, every night…found about four or five really good brain-dig findings, and that I am still PTSDing from that last show so hard, that just being on stage is upending me.
I’m fighting the battle onward, in front of a live audience, nightly…which is my only option. An interestingly (when it’s not you, probably) terrifying, and often very hopeless feeling, which I get to share intimately, not only with my castmates…but the several hundred other people at a time who are (unbeknownst to them) paying to see it.
I can only do what I can.
A break after this show, (for quite a bit of time)…while I try and figure this shit all out, and learn to trust the stage again…is necessary.
…Meanwhile, not unlike that dude with the dog: when shit happens, I palm it best as I can and pretend, as I fight on, that this is a totally normal part of life.
…While super wishing I had a trashbin somewhere, to throw it the fuck away.
~D
Advertisements
